Love's Executioner

The collection of 10 absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too-human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist.

The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients

The culmination of master psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom's more than 35 years in clinical practice, The Gift of Therapy is a remarkable and essential guidebook that illustrates through real case studies how patients and therapists alike can get the most out of therapy. The best-selling author of Love's Executioner shares his uniquely fresh approach and the valuable insights he has gained - presented as 85 personal and provocative "tips for beginner therapists".

Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle toward Self-Realization

One of the most original psychoanalysts after Freud, Karen Horney pioneered such now-familiar concepts as alienation, self-realization, and the idealized image, and she brought to psychoanalysis a new understanding of the importance of culture and environment.

Tales from the Couch: A Clinical Psychologist's True Stories of Psychopathology

Drawn from Dr. Bob Wendorf's 36-year career as a clinical psychologist, the book examines the lives of some of his most troubled patients in a project that aims to both educate and fascinate the listener. Clinical syndromes are described and dramatized by real-life case examples (altered only as necessary to protect patient confidentiality).

Creatures of a Day, and Other Tales of Psychotherapy

In his long career, eminent psychotherapist and author Irvin Yalom has pressed his patients and readers to grapple with life's two greatest challenges: that we all must die, and that each of us is responsible for leading a life worth living. In Creatures of a Day, he and his patients confront the difficulty of these challenges. Although these people have come to Yalom seeking relief, recognition, or meaning, they discover that such things are rarely found in the places where we think to look.

Attachment in Psychotherapy

This eloquent book translates attachment theory and research into an innovative framework that grounds adult psychotherapy in the facts of childhood development. Advancing a model of treatment as transformation through relationship, the author integrates attachment theory with neuroscience, trauma studies, relational psychotherapy, and the psychology of mindfulness.

Scared Selfless: My Journey from Abuse and Madness to Surviving and Thriving

Michelle Stevens has a photo of the exact moment her childhood was stolen from her: She's only eight years old, posing for her mother's boyfriend, Gary Lundquist - an elementary school teacher, neighborhood stalwart, and brutal pedophile. Later that night Gary locks Michelle in a cage, tortures her repeatedly, and uses her to quench his voracious and deviant sexual whims. Little does she know that this will become her new reality for the next six years.

The Neurobiology of 'We': How Relationships, the Mind, and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are

If you think your brain and mind are one, think again. According to the interpersonal neurobioligy pioneer Daniel J. Siegel, the mind actually emerges out of the interaction between your brain and relationships. Now, with The Neurobiology of "We", Dr. Siegel invites you on a journey to discover this revolutionary new model of human development - one that can positively transform trauma, move you from stress to calm and equanimity, and promote well-being for you, your family, or even your community.

Letters to a Young Therapist

Mary Pipher's groundbreaking investigation of America's "girl-poisoning culture", Reviving Ophelia, has sold nearly two million copies and established its author as one of the nation's foremost authorities on family issues. In Letters to a Young Therapist, Dr. Pipher shares what she has learned in 30 years as a therapist, helping warring families, alienated adolescents, and harried professionals restore peace and beauty to their lives.

The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist's Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases

True stories are more bizarre than any fiction, and Dr. Gary Small knows this best. After 30 distinguished years of psychiatry and groundbreaking research on the human brain, Dr. Small has seen it all - now he is ready to open his office doors for the first time and tell all about the most mysterious, intriguing, and bizarre patients of his career. The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head is a spellbinding record of the doctor's most bewildering cases.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

Best-selling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them, and details what is needed to liberate ourselves. Starting with a close view of his drug-addicted patients, Dr. Maté looks at his own history of compulsive behavior, weaving a story of real people who struggle with addiction with the latest research on addiction and the brain. In a bold synthesis of clinical experience, insight and cutting edge scientific findings, Dr. Maté sheds light on this most puzzling of human frailties.

Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy

In six enthralling stories drawn from his own clinical experience, Irvin D. Yalom once again proves himself an intrepid explorer of the human psyche as he guides his patients - and himself - toward transformation. With eloquent detail and sharp-eyed observation, Yalom introduces us to a memorable cast of characters.

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry

In Shrinks Dr. Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudoscience through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity - beginning after World War II - as a science-driven profession that saves lives.

The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

The Anatomy of Motive offers a dramatic, insightful look at the development and evolution of the criminal mind. The famed former chief of the FBI's Investigative Support Unit, John Douglas was the pioneer of modern behavioral profiling of serial criminals. Working again with acclaimed novelist, journalist, and filmmaker Mark Olshaker, and using cases from his own fabled career as examples, Douglas takes us further than ever before into the dark corners of the minds of arsonists, hijackers, bombers, poisoners, serial killers, and mass murderers.

Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Traumatized Children

Building the Bonds of Attachment is the third edition of a critically acclaimed book for social workers, therapists, and parents who strive to assist children with reactive attachment disorder. This work is a composite case study of the developmental course of one child following years of abuse and neglect.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Judith Lewis Herman's volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism.

The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience

We know of psychopaths from chilling headlines and stories in the news and movies - from Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy to Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan. As Dr. Kent Kiehl shows, psychopaths can be identified by a checklist of symptoms that includes pathological lying; lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse; grandiose sense of self-worth; manipulation; and failure to accept one’s actions. But why do psychopaths behave the way they do? Is it the result of their environment - how they were raised - or is there a genetic component to their lack of conscience?

The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration

Research suggests that the presence of the therapist, and how the therapist truly forges a connection with the client in therapy, are the most crucial factors affecting the client’s healing process. An engaged, committed, caring therapist who is mindful of his or her own self - and how that self relates to the client - is the key determinant of how well that client will respond to therapy.

Lying on the Couch: A Novel

Exposing the many lies told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives listeners a tantalizing, almost illicit glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing, and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves listeners with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Why do we do the things we do? More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful, but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs and then hops back in time from there in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America

From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the antipsychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted. Braided with that history is the moving story of Powers' beloved son Kevin - spirited, endearing, and gifted - who triumphed even while suffering from schizophrenia until finally he did not.

Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior

Every day of your life is spent surrounded by mysteries that involve what appear to be rather ordinary human behaviors. What makes you happy? Where did your personality come from? Why do you have trouble controlling certain behaviors? Why do you behave differently as an adult than you did as an adolescent?Since the start of recorded history, and probably even before, people have been interested in answering questions about why we behave the way we do.

Reflections on Psychotherapy and Paths for Wellbeing

This book describes the process of psychotherapy through the struggles of those who are in pain and adrift in some aspects of their lives that require intervention. Through rich and often poignant narratives, the book portrays the issues that are encountered in psychotherapy along with case studies and their treatment plans. The characteristics that constitute effectiveness in both the psychotherapist and his or her therapeutic work are also examined.

Publisher's Summary

A wife pretends to hang herself in the basement so she can time how long it will be before her husband comes to rescue her...a woman whose dead aunt was made into a mummy so the family could better grieve her passing and on occasion dine with her at family gatherings...a man wants his nose cut off to escape an annoying smell that haunts him...a teenage boy would only come to therapy if he could bring his pet snake.

These and other fascinating and revealing stories are told by some of the most famous therapists in the world. Collected in this extraordinary book, well-known practitioners recount the most memorable case histories of their illustrious careers. Engaging and surprising stories of human behavior are dramatically and often humorously portrayed. Each chapter gives a behind-the-scenes look at how therapists work with clients whose problems and behaviors aren't found in standard psychology textbooks. The book also shows how these eminent therapists often cure these apparently intractable problems and learn something about themselves in the process.

The personal accounts of patients' psychological challenges recounted here are truly unique and fascinating. What sets this apart from other POV accounts of psychology is that we see the illness from both patient and therapist perspectives. This allows the listener/reader to better understand the illness and treatment.

The illnesses recounted and the patients' telling of how these came about and progressed is something not often presented in other works of this particular sub-genre with such clarity and grace.

Well researched and written, this title is worth listening to. You'll find yourself drawn into the cases and finding an understanding and sympathy for these patients. There is a lot of humour to be found here, but it is never presented at the expense of the patient. Kudos to the authors for that!

The performance leaves something to be desired...a bit to light, for my taste...but not enough to keep you from listening.

This is not a title that may jump up and grab your attention, but it's certainly a nice surprise if you do!

This book was fun (and at times funny), intriguing and very educational as well. It made feel much better about my own life when I thought about the patients' lives portrayed in this book.I was sad when it ended. I simply love it!!